Any company based in or with operations in American can receive a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, aka FISA Court) order to allow mass access to data in systems they control (which definitelly includes networked machines running Windows for Microsoft ever since Microsoft has been able to push software to them - in the form of updates - to do anything they want in that machine).
These orders cannot be legally divulged by the recipient and can only be disputed in FISA Courts, the proceedings of which are themselves not public and cannot be divulged unless the side fighting the Authorities wins.
In other words, companies based in or with operations in the US can receive secret orders from an American Foreign Surveillance court which they must comply with without divulging them and which they cannot dispute elsewhere but that court, which has many special rules making it different from a normal Court, with for example the proceedings being secret.
The Surveillance System in the US is far more powerful, systematic and well entrenched than that idea you have that “companies do favors for the Feds” - that shit hasn’t been true since at least the Patriot Act.
Most likely, it’s Microsoft doing it, and if the Feds ask them nicely, they’ll happily share the intel.
Any company based in or with operations in American can receive a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, aka FISA Court) order to allow mass access to data in systems they control (which definitelly includes networked machines running Windows for Microsoft ever since Microsoft has been able to push software to them - in the form of updates - to do anything they want in that machine).
These orders cannot be legally divulged by the recipient and can only be disputed in FISA Courts, the proceedings of which are themselves not public and cannot be divulged unless the side fighting the Authorities wins.
In other words, companies based in or with operations in the US can receive secret orders from an American Foreign Surveillance court which they must comply with without divulging them and which they cannot dispute elsewhere but that court, which has many special rules making it different from a normal Court, with for example the proceedings being secret.
The Surveillance System in the US is far more powerful, systematic and well entrenched than that idea you have that “companies do favors for the Feds” - that shit hasn’t been true since at least the Patriot Act.